A group of big hearted local Albir residents gave up a few hours yesterday afternoon, Good Friday,to entertain the children of Emaus at one of its homes in Altea (including me and my son). The organisation have 5 children's homes along the Costa Blanca and receive adequate funding from local government to cover the basics, but not enough to treat the children. Ex-Pat club "Companians" in Albir raised funds to purchase Easter Eggs for the children in all the homes (120) and one of its members Rada, who has a charity stall at El Cisne Rastro bought mugs from takings, having been made aware that the homes were short of them. Elsa, who owns and runs a restaurant "Bistro Maya" in Albir provided a delicious lunch for all the children and helpers. She bought her chef and staff down to the home to help out ... all willing to give up their free time for such a good cause. Every Christmas Elsa also puts on a party at the restaurant for all 120 children - in fact last year there were 150 of them.
After lunch they were entertained by Shaun, a musician who came with his guitar and sang to every ones delight. He also presented a stunned Monserat, President of Emaus over 600€ which had been collected at Pavaroti's Bar during an evening of fundraising to spend on the children. David the Clown then mesmerized the children with some magic tricks whilst Pete had a disco and karaoke session going on. After that everyone raced down to the brand new football pitch which had been recently installed thanks to a visiting Scottish football club who funded the entire project! It was a girls V boys which included all the helpers - no real rules were adhered to but a great time was had by all. After the match the children all tucked into chocolate pudding and each chose a mug and Easter Egg then played pass the parcel to finish the day off.
Everyone left happy but tired knowing that they had helped put a smile on the children's faces! There are many fundraising events going on in support of this very worthy charity - for more information on Emaus go to: http://www.fcemaus.es
